The Flag of Mauritania

La Libre.be reports:The Mauritanian National Assembly adopted Thursday a
bill of constitutional review including the abolition of the Senate and the
change of the national flag, found the AFP correspondent. The draft submitted by
the Government "has been adopted by the majority of 147 MPs present", "121 voted
in favour of the text, 19 against," said Mohamed Ould Beilil, president of the
National Assembly, dominated by the presidential party. The radical opposition,
represented by the Forum national unity and democracy (FNDU), which consisted of
15 Parties, voted against the Bill after leading a campaign against its
adoption. The text approved Thursday by the MPs, which amends the Constitution
in force since 1991, includes a deletion of the Senate, replaced by regional
councils, and a change of the national flag. Two red ribbons, symbolizing the
blood shed by the "martyrs of the resistance", will be added to the Crescent and
the yellow star on a green background on this flag already. Nozomi Kariyasu,
11 March 2017

According to
http://fr.ami.mr/Depeche-41902.html, the bill to approve the description of
the national flag (Projet de loi portant description du drapeau de la République
Islamique de Mauritanie) was addressed and approved by the Council of Ministers
on August 24th. Unfortunately, I cannot find a text of this law and the Official
Journal is not published online.Zachary Harden, 24 August 2017

The specification for the flag (provided by Embassy of Mauritania in Tokyo,
Japan) gives the hoist as a 20/60/20 for the red/green/red areas. In the green
section, the crescent and star take 67% percent of that space (20/10/40/10/20
according to the sheet). The other interesting thing is that the tip of the
crescent horns end where the star arms meet at their outermost points. The flag
maintains the 2x3 overall ratio.

There are also assigned colors; green is
Pantone 354 Uncoated, Yellow as Pantone Yellow 012 Coated and Red as 18.1664. I
believe the red shade is an error as Pantone does not have partial values; my
guess is 186 Coated.Zachary Harden, 24 January 2018

The elongated crescent matches the first flag photos I sent in my previous
email. Also, I was messaged by FOTW member Kazutaka Nishiura and was informed
that PANTONE 18-1664 is indeed a real shade, listed as Fiery Red. However, they
did not specify if it is TCX or TPG but the document originally sent to me
matches
https://www.pantone.com/color-finder/18-1664-TCX more.Zachary Harden,
24 January 2018

This red shade is comparable with US and UK flags red for all the practical
purposes, so our approximation to Pantone 186C should work well if the "exotic"
Pantone colours are not available.Željko Heimer, 25 January 2018

29 September, 2016: National Inclusive Dialogue "dialogue national
inclusif, DNI" began at the capitol of Nouakchott . The government and
moderate opposition included, among trade unions, Mauritanians from abroad
and civic groups. Some opposition boycotted the meetings.

October 6th, 2016: The main party of Mauritania, the Union For the
Republic (UPR), proposed the change to the national flag with the red
stripes. The reasoning was to recognize "the efforts and sacrifices that the
people of Mauritania will keep consenting, to the price of their blood, to
defend their territory”.

October 20th, 2016; the DNI ends with an agreement by the government and
the opposition to call for a referendum, something that has been sought
since 2010 (not specifically about the flag but to more get rid of the
Senate and the two limit term and 75 age limit for the presidency). Slated
for end of 2016, then pushed back to early 2017.

November 2016: Opposition calls for boycott of the referendum, has felt
that the national symbols should not be modified.

August 5th: The vote. It was started at 0700 and ended at 1900. Turnout
more in rural areas than major cities and was also boycotted by different
groups and political parties.

August 6th: The results of the flag vote, among others, was released by
CENI at
http://fr.ami.mr/Depeche-41752.html. The official vote count was 85.61%
yes, 9.99% no and 4.4% neutral (682,247 valid ballots out of 1389092
possible voters, so 53.75% participation; 746655 ballots cast with 64,408
declared invalid). A breakdown by region is found at
http://fr.ami.mr/Depeche-41751.html

AMI article says the flag will be raised for the first time on the
anniversary of independence - presumably, 28 November.

November 28th, 2017: In the southern city of Kaedi, President Mohamed
Ould Abdel Aziz was present at a ceremony to officially hoist the new
national flag, to the new national anthem. This coincided with the 57th
anniversary of independence.

January 23rd, 2018: The Embassy of Mauritania in Tokyo, Japan, released
a specification to Nozomi Kariyasu.